But was it only to Switzerland that this sort of language was held? What was our language also to Tuscany and Genoa? An honorable gentleman [Mr. Canning] has denied the authenticity of a pretended letter which has been circulated, and ascribed to Lord Harvey. He says, it is all a fable and a forgery. Be it so; but is it also a fable that Lord Harvey did speak in terms to the Grand Duke, which he considered as offensive and insulting? I can not tell, for I was not present; but was it not, and is it not, believed? Is it a fable that Lord Harvey went into the closet of the Grand Duke, laid his watch on the table and demanded, in a peremptory manner, that he should, within a certain number of minutes (I think I have heard within a quarter of an hour), determine, aye or no, to dismiss the French Minister, and order him out of his dominions, with the menace, that if he did not, the English fleet should bombard Leghorn? Will the honorable gentleman deny this also? I certainly do not know it from my own knowledge; but I know that persons of the first credit, then at Florence, have stated these facts, and that they have never been contradicted. It is true that, upon the Grand Duke’s complaint of this indignity, Lord Harvey was recalled; but was the _principle_ recalled? was the mission recalled? Did not ministers persist in the demand which Lord Harvey had made, perhaps ungraciously? and was not the Grand Duke forced, in consequence, to dismiss the French Minister? and did they not drive him to enter into an unwilling war with the republic? It is true that he afterward made his peace, and that, having done so, he was treated severely and unjustly by the French; but what do I conclude from all this, but that we have no right to be scrupulous, we who have violated the respect due to peaceable powers ourselves, in this war, which, more than any other that ever afflicted human nature, has been distinguished by the greatest number of disgusting and outrageous insults by the great to the smaller powers? And I infer from this, also, that the instances not being confined to the French, but having been perpetrated by every one of the allies, and by England as much as by others, we have no right, either in personal character, or from our own deportment, to refuse to treat with the French on this ground. Need I speak of your conduct to Genoa also? Perhaps the note delivered by Mr. Drake was also a forgery. Perhaps the blockade of the port never took place. It is impossible to deny the facts, which were so glaring at the time. It is a painful thing to me, sir, to be obliged to go back to these unfortunate periods of the history of this war, and of the conduct of this country; but I am forced to the task by the use which has been made of the atrocities of the French as an argument against negotiation. I think I have said enough to prove, that if the French have been guilty, we have not been innocent. Nothing but determined incredulity can make us deaf